Volume 197 - Issue 11
Asylum children watching sea
Author: Richard C Wu
Med J Aust 2012; 197 (11): 660. || doi: 10.5694/mja12.11512
Published online: 10 December 2012
Published online: 10 December 2012
The detention of children seeking asylum is an issue that greatly concerns me as a psychiatrist and a fellow human being. It crosses all ethnic boundaries, so I have chosen the medium of Chinese painting to tell the story.
The children are each confined in their own frame but share the same dark background, fringed by the thin blue line representing the sea. A viewer approaching ...
The detention of children seeking asylum is an issue that greatly concerns me as a psychiatrist and a fellow human being. It crosses all ethnic boundaries, so I have chosen the medium of Chinese painting to tell the story.
The children are each confined in their own frame but share the same dark background, fringed by the thin blue line representing the sea. A viewer approaching the drawings becomes surrounded by the children and this dark island.
In the children’s eyes we see the “thousand-yard stare” that marks sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Many incarcerated child asylum seekers are not accompanied by adults, and some have attempted self-harm from as young as nine years of age.
